A Moderately Insane Configuration for the New Mac Pro

Yes, you can spend thousands upon thousands for a new Apple Mac Pro. But once you've finished the fun of seeing how high you can go, what's a reasonable configuration for working photographers?

I spent some time with the configurator and designed a system for less than $5,000. Yes, that's a lot of money. But I also included a new 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display, thinking that most of us have outdated displays right now.

I started with the Quad-Core option (3.7GHz quad-core with 10MB of L3 cache). I increased the RAM memory from 12 to 16GBs. For storage, an upgrade was definitely needed since the default is only 256 GBs. (This is even the case if you start with the more expensive 6-Core and Dual GPU.) So I upgraded to 1TB of PCIe-based Flash storage. That costs $800 right there.

I left the graphics card alone - Dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM - but did add the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display for $999. This raised the total price for the setup to $4,898.00.

Now it's true that you could buy the base unit for $2,999 with the 27" display for $999 and provide the upgrades yourself. In that case, your initial order is $3,998... with more expenditures to come.

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